Privacy policy

When one of our accounts is connected

• The login the network grants us: an access token and, where the network issues one, a refresh token. It is encrypted before it is stored, and only Watts Console can read it.
• The account’s id on the network, its name and handle, the picture the network shows for it, and its follower count.
• Which member of our team connected it, and when.

When we publish

• The posts our team writes and the pictures and videos in them, when each went out, and the network’s id and link for it.
• How each post performs, as the network reports it: counts such as views, reach, likes, comments, shares and clicks. These are totals; they say nothing about the individual people behind them.

When somebody comments or sends us a message

Comments on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn posts, and direct messages to our Facebook Pages, Instagram accounts and X accounts, are read into an inbox our team works from. For each, we hold:

• The person’s name or username as the network shows it, and their id on that network.
• What they wrote, and when.
• Our replies, and which member of our team wrote or handled each conversation.

• Publishing the posts our team has written and approved, on the accounts they were written for, and taking them down when we decide to.
• Reporting how our posts perform.
• Reading and answering comments and messages, hiding a comment from public view where the network allows it, and assigning and closing conversations within our team.
• Keeping each login working, renewing it before it runs out, and telling our team when an account needs reconnecting.

We never use somebody’s comment or message to market to them, and nothing in the inbox ever becomes a sales lead. We rely on our legitimate interests in running our own social media accounts and in answering the people who contact us through them; for the members of our team, on our interest in running the business they work in.

When a member of our team asks for one, the conversation (and, for a comment, the post it was left on) is sent to Anthropic, whose Claude models draft a suggested reply. A person reads every suggestion and decides whether to send it, change it or ignore it; nothing is ever sent on its own. Anthropic acts as our processor under its commercial terms, which do not allow it to train its models on what we send.

A post goes to the network it is published on, and a reply goes to the network the comment or message came from. Beyond that, personal data is held for us by two suppliers acting as our processors, under written terms that let them use it for nothing of their own:

• Amazon Web Services, which hosts Watts Console, its database and its file storage, in London.
• Anthropic, in the United States, for the suggested replies described above.

We never sell personal data, and we share it with nobody else unless the law requires us to. Where personal data leaves the UK, we rely on a route the law provides for it: UK adequacy regulations, or the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

• A conversation in the inbox, comments and messages alike, is deleted a year after its last message.
• A login is deleted the moment its account is disconnected. The record of the account, and of what we published from it, stays as our posting history.
• A post and its results are kept until we delete the post.

Watts Console uses YouTube API Services to upload videos to our YouTube channels, read their statistics and delete them, and the Google Business Profile APIs to list the profiles a login manages and post updates to them. From Google it reads the channel’s id, name and picture, the videos we upload and their statistics, and the names and locations of our business profiles.

Google’s handling of data is described in the Google Privacy Policy, and connecting a YouTube channel means agreeing to the YouTube Terms of Service. Watts Console’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Access can be removed at any time from the Google security settings page.

From TikTok, Watts Console reads the account’s basic profile (its id, name and picture), its profile details, the privacy settings it may post with, and its public videos, and it posts the videos our team creates. TikTok’s own Terms of Service and Privacy Policy apply to everything on TikTok.

Watts Console sets only the cookies it needs to work for the members of our team who sign in to it: keeping them signed in, recognising a browser they have used before so that a sign-in from somewhere new can be flagged, securing an account connection while it is in progress, and remembering how they like pages laid out. It sets no advertising or tracking cookies, and this page and our terms set none at all.

Connections to Watts Console are encrypted, logins are encrypted again before they are stored, and only members of our team whose role allows it can see the inbox or the accounts. Every reply, assignment and change to an account is recorded against the person who made it.

Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to what we do with it, and have it moved. We answer within one month and do not charge for it. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, tell us first; you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk at any time.

We may change this policy, and the date at the top tells you when we last did. Our terms of service cover how Watts Console may be used.